


An Apple Tree

by Charlie9646



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Birth, Children, F/M, Family, Health Issues, Ignore a few deaths in the final battle, Loss, M/M, Magic, Mental Illness, PTSD, Pain, dealing with death, dealing with parents, moving forward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-22 17:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21080666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charlie9646/pseuds/Charlie9646
Summary: Hermione knew long before she married Draco Malfoy his family wouldn’t be easy to deal with. As the birth of her first child approaches she must spend time at the manor, that means trips to the gardens with Narcissa, learning about the family she married into, and dealing with Lucius who still is not pleased with a muggleborn for a daughter in law.





	An Apple Tree

  
  


There was an apple tree in Malfoy Manor’s gardens. It rarely grew fruit. Narcissa said it hadn't done so since she had been at the manor. But, when she had been pregnant with Draco she used to read under its cover. 

So, when she found out Hermione was pregnant she took her out to the tree after the young couple had moved back to the manor, that is. And Lucius had joined them as well. He was here to tell her the story of the tree. She was now a Malfoy now no matter how much it truly displeased him that she was. 

He had refused to attend his only son's wedding. His only child for that matter. Saying that Draco was tainting their family with ”dirty blood”. And yet he did not disown his son. He even tried to convince the young couple to live at the manor after their honeymoon. They had refused, that is until the coming birth of their first child. So Hermione listened to Lucius. The man she hated but was also her father in law. 

  
  


Lucius said his mother had it planted when she moved into the manor. That she had infused a bit of her magic into it. But when she died when her son was only sixteen the tree had stopped growing fruit.

The symbol of Abraxas and Ava’s love was damaged as the Malfoy family was. 

*********************

Hermione too spent a considerable portion of her pregnancy in the gardens and read under the tree. She felt comfortable there. Even when Draco was working at the potion’s shop he ran with Snape. He didn't have to, but he enjoyed doing so. She dealt with the books, and sometimes the customers when she wasn't on orders to rest from her healer that is. Draco worked in the back with Severus, and dealt with the customers. Neither thought Snape should deal with the public and he wholeheartedly agreed.

Hermione was relatively healthy, but a couple of hits in the war had affected her more than she would like to admit most days. She had some nerve damage, her hips weren't as stable as they used to be. The nightmares we're by far the worst though. The hip issues we're why she had to take it easy during her pregnancy. 

Draco didn't escape unscathed either though. He had nightmares as well, but sometimes he had flashbacks during the day. One moment he was with you, and the next he was back in hell. The flashbacks caused him to ruin his relationship with Astoria before he and Hermione had gotten together. One day he had wrapped his fingers around her throat because he thought she was Voldemort. It had scared, reasonable so, the girl half to death.

He opened his shop with Snape because the man didn't flinch if Draco did something like that to him. But shockingly the man also with his now raspy soft voice pushed his former student to get help. To go to therapy. To not end up like him. With only bad memories and heartbreak. Though last Hermione saw him and Remus were a little bit closer than you would expect for the man who makes your potion every month, but that's none of her business. They were both grown men after all. 

And Remus would only allow Severus around his son surely if it was something serious? The last she had her that was tentative for the future if things continued to go well. She wished both of them best of luck, but as someone who dealt with Snape regularly? Remus had his hands full with that one.

  
  
  


Hermione knew the only worst place to meet someone to date or to be friends besides needing a service from them, was functionally therapy or at least that's what the muggle world believed. Severus and Remus had done the former of sorts though for them it was only seeing the person as more than you once thought them to be. But, the same could be said for her and Draco, though. She had known him for nearly half her life. 

He was her school bully. He was her worst enemy before she learned what truly the worst enemy could be. And yet here she sat under the tree at Malfoy manor, pregnant with his child. It happened with time, trust and learning about themselves just as much as they learned about each other. 

So here they were, waiting for the birth of their child. They didn’t want to know the baby's gender, but Lucius had insisted strongly that all Malfoys were boys. Back ten generations. And even a muggleborn wouldn't break that. 

******************

Hermione sat under that beautiful tree another sunny afternoon. Her book in her hands. Sometimes Draco would join her, other times Narcissa, but she hated the times when Lucius would follow her out here. The angry old man reminded her of an owl, always watching. He rarely said much to her. And when he did he tended to say cruel things. 

Well things that had a barb of cruelness to them.

Hermione asked her father in law one night at the dinner table, the one that made her uncomfortable. The one where the Muggle studies professor had been killed above. About why he said that “the curse that made the child have to be born at the manor was part of why they always had sons. That even her dirty blood surely wouldn’t break it. It wasn’t powerful enough to.”

He hated the sight of her. She was no fool. Her feelings were quite mutual. The only reason they were here, her and Draco was an old spell that was put on the family, curse more like it. Malfoy children had to be born at the manor. 

So here they were, no way to escape it she had tried desperately to find it. She was unwilling to risk her child’s life to make hers easier. Lucius would not hurt his unborn grandchild, and Narcissa and she had now a mutual understanding. 

They both loved Draco Malfoy. One as a mother and the other as a wife. She thinks to herself she will never come to an understanding with Lucius. 

******************

The night their daughter was born, Draco paced the halls of Malfoy manor. He made sure before they had tried to get pregnant that his insane relatives hadn't put another curse on their family. Dark magic was in their very manor. On the very ground it stood on. It infected everything it touched. 

He tore through Snape’s library to make sure the old pureblood families weren't crazy enough to make it where you couldn't have a child with a muggleborn. The snarky man had said the Princes were just as crazy as the Malfoys and he was alive, as we're the Blacks. And Teddy Lupin was as healthy as a horse. 

The man had finally been introduced to the boy. And the child and former professor had grown to tolerate each other. Well, the child thought the man was wonderful and he regularly changed his hair black and long when the man who may one day become his stepfather was around. They it seemed had found their own corner of happiness no matter how odd it must seem to others.

That without a little bit of muggle blood there would be no Malfoys. Draco didn't know if he believed the man truly and fully. He cried tears of joy as his daughter let out first cries. He about broke down the doors to the room Hermione was in when he heard them. His mother let him in, and he saw Hermione lying on the bed, her wild hair sticking to her sweaty face. And their daughter cradled in her arms. 

He was shocked to have a daughter, but as he fell to his knees next to the bed and spoke softly to her, fearful that if he touched her he would break her, he knew this was how it was supposed to be. Hermione said to him ”I think we should call her ”Lyra, to honor your family tradition”. 

And he said,” I think we should call her Lyra Anna to also honor your mother.”

She nodded with a smile on her tired, but happy face. 

Draco kissed his wife’s forehead and said softly “I love you Hermione and Lyra”.

Hermione said, “and I love all of our family, besides maybe your father.” He didn't disagree with his tired wife. Sometimes he didn't even love his father. They left the manor soon after Lyra Malfoy was born, much to Lucius’s anger.

*****************

Years later Hermione had to come back to the manor and the couple who acted more like ghosts than living people. Their sins seeming to have tainted their very souls.

Hermione walked out to the apple tree, to try and read. Draco was at work, and Lucius followed her around like some sort of angry lost puppy.

Lyra shouted ”Mama, look! Apples.”

Hermione set her daughter down and reached for the ripe red apple, holding it in her hand. She tossed it, to Lucius, who seemed so far older than he did when they were in the manor, his face as white as his thin with age hair. As if he had seen the ghost of his mother. 

Hermione said,” I think it's time to let the past die Lucius, and your mother Ava agrees.”

The man just stared at her and then said ”no I think an old friend of mine was right. Power isn't always pure and pure isn't always power. And I think it is Lyra who caused the change. My mother had been desperate to have another woman in the family.”

Hermione plucked another apple from the tree, took a bite and said: “who said that to you?”

He laughed truly laughed soundly. A sound in all the years she had been Draco’s wife she had never heard from Lucius, not even when he played with Lyra. “The man who said it was Arthur Weasley. I would believe decades ago now when we were but children we played together in these gardens. We are second cousins you know, like all wizarding families it seems nowadays.” 

He reached out to brush his fingers against the bark of the tree, and softly said more to himself than to her, ”I wanted to cut this tree down when mother died. I was so angry. She got a muggle disease no magic could treat. I think I blamed both muggles and magic for that a little bit. It didn't make me become a death eater, my father was one of the first. 

That path was set out for me long before I was born, but it surely didn't help matters. I am grateful I did not cut this tree down that day. It meant so much to Narcissa when she was pregnant with Draco, she felt my mother’s spirit when she sat under it or so she claimed. Did you when you were pregnant with Lyra?”

She nods, and he continues ”I am sorry I have been so terribly unkind to you Hermione. I should have been more like my mother and less like my father. But you see change is hard. And you were a big change for this family. But, you have brought good change as well. Lyra for one, and that there will be more than one Malfoy child at Hogwarts this time. There hasn't been that in over a hundred years.”

“I agree on all fronts, thank you for apologizing to me, I hope we can grow to care for one another, as we both care for our family, but I do have some good news for you, we just found out yesterday, you're going to have your grandson.”

He whispered softly ”so Scorpius it will be?”

She nods as she sits under the tree. Three Malfoy women touched the family in three generations. Ava was a cause of pain, Narcissa had saved it from total ruin, and Hermione would lead into the light of a new day. And who knows what Lyra and Scorpius would do with their lives?

They were not going to grow up to be death eaters like Draco and even Lucius had. They would not live in fear of what a real monster was going to do to them. They would grow up loved. With friends and happiness, with the sheer joy of childhood. 

Lyra asked her mother ”Mama can I have an apple too? A nice lady who says she's my great grandmother just said hi to me.” 

Hermione nods at her child, and Lucius picks one for Lyra. He wasn't the best of fathers, but maybe he could be a good grandfather. 

Not all that is power is pure, and not all that is pure is power.


End file.
